, which has one of the largest corporate cash hoards, owns nearly $77 billion of corporate debt and $28 billion in Treasuries.
That works because the securities are mostly in regulated markets, which should make them easy to liquidate in exchange for cash if the company needs to use it.
The central problem, S&P analysts wrote in a note this week, is that cryptocurrency isn’t always easy to convert into U.S.
“We believe investments should be able to be quickly liquidated and not require deep discounts.
S&P’s last ratings action on Tesla was an upgrade in December 2020, before it announced its cryptocurrency stake.
S&P Ratings analyst Shripad Joshi told Barron’s that S&P looks at Bitcoin the same way it would an illiquid equity stake in a joint venture, or another type of asset that can’t be easily sold.
“U.S.
This isn’t likely to dent Tesla’s credit rating any time soon, as the company’s $17.1 billion of non-Bitcoin cash more than offsets its $10.9 billion of debt outstanding at the end of the first quarter.
“In our view, the reported value of any digital currency held on a company’s balance sheet is not like accessible cash and will not be used in our net debt calculation in the case of Tesla,” the analysts wrote.
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